Heart and Mind
by darkwriter14
Summary: He was positive that he had sorted Molly Hooper into his mind and not his heart. Slightly spoilery for the season four finale.


I probably didn't articulate my feelings properly in this. This idea has been in my head for a while, even before the season 4 finale. The episode tonight just gave me something to work with.

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Ever since he was a boy, he has kept them separate: his mind and his heart.

He has always prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize things into the two. He has an enormous mind palace, which he fills with endless rooms of memories, people and knowledge that he has deemed useful in the past, and which could present themselves as such in the future. Inside his mind palace, everything has order, meaning, logic. It is where he feels safest. And as much as he vehemently denies having them, he cannot allow his deeply-felt emotions to have a place there. Those he keeps tucked away in his carefully guarded heart, in the farthest corners of himself, careful not to let their colors bleed into the practical black and white of his mind.

Sherlock has always believed Mycroft to be right, about sentiment being a weakness. And in most circumstances, Mycroft has proven correct. Sentiment is what forced him to fake his own death, and what drove him to near madness at Mary's. It very nearly destroyed him when John turned away from him and blamed him for Mary's death.

Sentiment is the reason why Sherlock compartmentalizes people as well as facts. Those that prod his mind he keeps in his head, and those that prod his soul he keeps in his heart. It helps to have a line to clearly define the things in his life. To have one in both would wreak havoc on the chaotic order of his mind. How could he expect to think, analyze, deduce properly with emotion hovering and tainting everything in his brain?

But when the live video feed of her flat flicks on in front of him, with a timer counting down to her death and her eyes filling with tears of hurt, the careful divisions that he has so far maintained throughout this horrible ordeal crumble. Everything jumbles together, and the color of pink cheeks, warm honey eyes and auburn hair bleed and blur into the black and white.

He was positive that he had sorted Molly Hooper into his mind and not his heart. The evidence of that was in the presence of her in his thought process as he fought for his life after being shot by Mary: she had been there to help him think, not feel. At least that was what he had convinced himself at the time.

Yet now, as his heart slams in panic in his chest and the numbers rush toward zero, it is readily apparent that he has unwittingly allowed her presence into both facets of his mind. His practical line of thought is suddenly garbled and shaped by an onslaught of emotions instead of facts. And this realization terrifies him.

As the timer ticks down, he struggles to deny his suddenly overwhelming feelings by refusing to say those three words. If he says them, it will mean giving into something that could hurt him in an even greater capacity than John has. It will prove he has become weak in allowing his dividing line to blur.

But she won't say it herself. And for that, she will die. The thought takes the breath from his lungs.

"I love you."

The force of that phrase he so hates, even fears, from his own mouth to Molly feels like being thrust into icy water. They bare a vulnerable piece of himself that he has tried very hard to deny in sudden, sharp clarity. He feels destroyed by his weakness, but momentarily strengthened by his love for her as he allows himself to realize the extent of her hold on him.

But the broken look on her face absolutely devastates him. She thinks he is lying to her, playing some sort of game.

Yet she still has the capacity to repeat the words back to him. And she somehow still means them.

His relief for her life is short-lived in the wake of his anguish. Anguish for her and the pain he has caused her, for allowing himself to fall in love with her, for not being able to immediately comfort her and tell her his words were truth, for not understanding his own feelings. He feels like he has been torn apart, his insides raw and bleeding.

Despite the sensitivity of time in his current predicament, he allows himself a couple of minutes to destroy the empty coffin sitting in the middle of the room. He welcomes every splinter that stabs into his hands. The movement of his body, the rush of his blood, the sensation of physical pain is something that he understands.

What he will do after all of this is something he does not.


End file.
